A group of 24 UT alumni were honored last September in the categories of promise, professional achievement, service, and distinction. Each proudly demonstrated the Volunteer spirit, exhibiting strength and leadership and stepping forward to serve their alma mater and their communities. ISE alumnus Sam Beall (’42) was posthumously named a distinguished alumnus.
The Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna designation, the university’s highest alumni award, is reserved for alumni who have excelled at the national or international level. Award winners have attained extraordinary distinction and success, brought credit and acclaim to UT, and benefited society at large.
Beall was a man of firsts. The first chemical and industrial engineering student to graduate from UT, he joined America’s first effort to create an atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project, shortly after earning his degree. He worked on developing smokeless powder and diluting smokestack radioactivity.
After the war ended, he returned to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and worked on several more nuclear reactors.
He would later serve as director of the Reactor Division and oversee 93 departments and 270 engineers. He continued his groundbreaking work by organizing the first energy division at ORNL to explore non-nuclear power sources before retiring in 1978.
In 2018, Beall received one of the highest awards given by the Boy Scouts of America, the Silver Beaver Award, for his distinguished service as scoutmaster of Troop 6. He provided direct support to industrial engineering students at UT with the Sam and Mary Anne Beall Engineering Scholarship Endowment. The couple also made an endowment to build the Beall Family Rose Garden at UT Gardens, which is home to more than 120 different roses and is the largest public rose garden in East Tennessee.
Beall died at his home on April 8, 2022, just a month before his 103rd birthday.
Contact
Randall Brown (865-974-0533, rbrown73@utk.edu)